Secret Spots

“Swear
to me you won’t tell anyone about this place…” By by
John Barsness

This story is featured in Montana OutdoorsSeptember–October
2007

Secret spots may very well be the most treasured thing a Montana hunter
or angler owns. These hidden parks, bowls, ridge tops, pools, and
points are not just places where we can avoid impertinent creditors, but
are part of our very selves, more of an extension of what we are than eye
color. Some have even been passed down from generation to generation: “To
my shiftless son Rick, who is the finest wingshot I know but also likely
to hock anything not bolted down, I leave a section of CRP in Chouteau County
where I have killed at least a score of roosters every fall. No, you don’t
get the Land Cruiser.”

Of course, some of us seem better at finding secret spots than others.
When someone we know comes back with yet another six-point elk, we
shrug and say, “He’s got a secret spot somewhere.” As if a secret spot
were the equivalent of a tame elk herd. The guy with the elk is likely to
pull into town in the opposite direction from where he actually hunted, intimating
he shot the bull just out past the Town Pump, and we could too if we
only knew how.

Even the most inept among us are likely to have a few secret spots,
yielding scads of 10-inch trout and doe mulies, but I once knew a guy
who didn’t possess a single one. That was especially strange because he worked
as a fisheries biologist for the Bureau of Land Management, which required
him to hike around all summer, “testing” little creeks with a spinning
rod to see if trout lived there. Actually, it wasn’t strange that he didn’t
find any fishing spots, because trout and BLM land are pretty much mutually
exclusive. But he didn’t find any hunting areas, either.

Well, no, let me amend that. Chester found secret spots every summer,
like X Creek in the Garnet Range, which he said had mule deer sticking
out of it “like the ribs on an ol’ pointin’ dog” (Chester originally came
from New Mexico and liked to emphasize his southwestern drawl in certain
situations). He went back on opening day and found X Creek to also be the
secret mule deer spot of Butte, Montana.

Sometimes Chester shared his “great” secrets—all of which seemed to
attract hordes of other hunters—with his friends. This happened often
enough in our social circle that one Saturday when my buddy Kirby and I were
headed out of town on a float trip, Kirb pointed toward the rows of vehicles
in the Southgate Mall parking lot and said, “Look, one of Chester’s secret
spots.” Chester finally gave up on Montana and moved back to New Mexico,
where he shoots doves, which don’t really have any secret spots.

Actually Chester’s biggest problem was a lack of time, because it took
so much of it to find trout on the BLM land that he wasn’t left with
much to look for anything else. Which is why X Creek remains X Creek in this
narrative: I went back there a couple of years after Chester left and found
a little side ridge where the mule deer loaf after all of Butte has passed
through. I’d be happy to show it to him if he ever makes it back this way
(but not to you).

Because that’s the biggest problem with secret spots: keeping them
secret. They come in two basic varieties: those discovered by thought
and those that require sweat. The sweat spots are easiest to keep hold of,
because if enough sweat is involved, it doesn’t matter if anybody else finds
out. I recently met a hunter who has taken four bighorn rams out of the Beartooth
Plateau, and he doesn’t give a damn if anybody knows where he goes.
This is one of the last areas on the continent where you can just buy a bighorn
permit and go out hunting, instead of putting your name in a hat with
20,000 other aspirants. There are, of course, a couple of catches. One is
that there’s a quota on the number of rams to be taken in any year, so as
soon as the quota’s filled you’re done hunting, even if you haven’t filled
your permit. The other is that the country is as steep as the Chrysler Building
and has more snow. This guy waits until the snow is crotch deep and backpacks
in there and camps until he finds the ram he wants. No, don’t thank me; you’re
welcome to it.

The secret spots you figure out need a bit more protection. I still
call Chester’s area X Creek because I thought for part of it myself,
by noting that when most of Butte went up the creek they all went “farther
back” into the hills and canyons, driving right by a quarter-section of public
timber at the bottom of the drainage, next to a ranch’s fence line. In two
years I’ve seen three mule deer and a bull elk in there, enough game for
one or two people, which is why my wife and I are the only ones to know about
it. In more settled country, people have been known to tail successful hunters
out of town, trying to find their spots. One Minnesota bowhunter I
know hunts several farms in the southern part of the state and has a hiding
place for his vehicle on each one.

That’s the saddest aspect of the secret spot these days. Over the past
decade or so, it seems that some of the unwritten rules concerning
the care and usage of secret hunting and fishing areas are increasingly abused.
Perhaps it’s the lack of continuity between generations (though this may
be a bit of nostalgia on my part), but I think that all those unwritten rules
used to be passed along from older hunters and anglers to us younger folks,
back in the days when more of us learned about the outdoors from parents
and older friends than from the Discovery channel.

Rule One might seem the simplest and most cynical of the lot, but it’s
the basis of the whole structure: If you don’t want somebody to know
about your secret spot, don’t tell them. A secret is something not everybody
knows. This rule affects just you and yours, so I don’t care if you break
it as long as you break it with me. Rule One is usually violated by the younger
and less experienced (who quickly learn), but sometimes even older
people get reminded. An older writer once told me about how he’d found a
good mule deer spot in southwestern Montana and had written an article about
the hunt, briefly mentioning the mountain range. The next year he couldn’t
get a motel room in the one small town close to his mule deer mountains;
even then he didn’t catch on until he overheard someone talking about the
great article so-and-so wrote.

Look, if you have to brag to somebody about some great spot you found,
just lie. That’s what I do. So if you ever hear me telling someone
how I got the big buck up Yellowtail Creek, you can just about bet it was
Redhead Gulch. Or someplace else, which is even more likely.

Rule Two: Never prod anybody about their spots. I’ve been guilty of
this, and after getting the sort of answers I give now, finally realized
how rude I was.

Example: “Where’d you get your elk?”

Correct Answer: “The Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.” (The Beaver­head-Deerlodge
is the size of Connecticut and doesn’t have any street signs.)

Rule Three: Never discuss secret spots among friends when in unknown
company. A young guy we’ll call Durwood recently steered an older friend
to a good elk canyon. The older guy got a nice bull, and the next time
Durwood saw him was at a large company party. Durwood walked up, clapped
his friend on the back, and shouted, “Hey, I hear you got a hell of a bull
up Eagletop!” No.

Rule Four: Never, ever go back to a secret spot someone’s shown you
unless they invite you or give permission. If you show someone your
secret spot, especially someone you don’t know as well as your father, it
isn’t considered terribly rude to spell this out, just because so many people
don’t know the rules. My friend Milo has a secret elk and mule deer spot
up Rock Creek where he’s taken a big four-point mule deer and a six-point
elk over the past few years. One fall he took along one of the guys from
work, and the next year the guy showed up just down the road with his own
camp and four friends. Luckily, Milo’s secret spots are almost as notorious
as Chester’s, except instead of being known as the parking lots they’re known
as the long hauls. In this case the “friend” from work and his buddies had
to cross the creek in the dark (the only thing more slippery than Rock Creek’s
bottom is a Gulf Coast oil spill) and then climb 2,500 feet over 2 miles.
Evidently they didn’t find anything that year because they haven’t been back.

Rule Five: If you’re given permission to return to someone’s secret
spot, you don’t abuse the privilege by inviting other people, littering,
or taking more than one or two pheasants, walleyes, or whatever. And
you offer to share the bounty with your benefactor.

Rule Six is that if you violate any of the rules except Rule One, you’ll
never ride beside Teddy Roosevelt across that bully hunting ground
in the sky—and in this life you may be missing a few teeth.

If you feel an urge to break Rule One, call me…collect.

John Barsness of Townsend is a freelance writer and co-owner
of Deep Creek Press. He’s
not saying one word more.